


The Son I Might Have Known

by revolutionarygold



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gun Violence, gavroche is courfeyrac's son au, gavroche is younger than he's usually depicted as, i hate happiness apparently, kind of a combination of movie/musical/book and everything that i know about them, nongraphic description of death, pain and suffering, single dad courfeyrac au, timeline wise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 11:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6955240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolutionarygold/pseuds/revolutionarygold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Courfeyrac heard him singing. Gavroche was always the one singing. He had started singing almost as soon as he had started talking; admittedly, the dark haired man wasn’t much better, but Gavroche had always been more of a singer than even his father or any of his friends.<br/>His friends. His friends, who were wounded and terrified. His friends, who had always questioned his involving his young son. | the one where courfeyrac had gavroche way too young, and they die too young, too</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Son I Might Have Known

**Author's Note:**

> My introduction to Les Mis was the 2012 movie and then I kind of consumed everything I could find, so the timeline is a little warped because it's a combination of everything I know about the various variations of this story. But when I watched the 2012 for the first time, I assumed that Courfeyrac was Gavroche's father. After a few rewatches and a little more digging, I figured out Gavroche's actual backstory but I've never been able to get that AU out of my head and it was finally written.

“Little people know-”  
Courfeyrac heard him singing. Gavroche was always the one singing. He had started singing almost as soon as he had started talking; admittedly, the dark haired man wasn’t much better, but Gavroche had always been more of a singer than even his father or any of his friends.  
His friends. His friends, who were wounded and terrified. His friends, who had always questioned his involving his young son. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest decision, but for now -  
For now, they needed more ammunition and neither he nor Enjolras knew where it was going to come from. 

“We have enough guns, not many people lost theirs last night,” Feuilly reported dutifully, “But we’re running short on-”  
“Ammunition,” Enjolras finished, his firecracker voice flat.

An idea - a morbid idea, but maybe their only shot - stirred in the back of his mind.  
“We raid the bodies,” Courfeyrac murmured. Both Feuilly and Enjolras looked at him in surprise. The idea of looting their dead friends and enemies for spare powder turned his stomach, but - revolution was messy.  
“Surely there are soldiers out there with extra shot in his kit - and our own cartridges couldn’t be completely empty, either.”  
“The idea has merit,” Enjolras admitted after a minute, “I won’t force anyone to leave the barricade-”  
“I’ll go,” Marius offered immediately. He looked half-dead already, Eponine’s blood still staining his shirt and his hands.  
“You are young,” their volunteer countered almost immediately, “let me go-”

Courfeyrac is beginning to regret suggesting it - all it was going to do was get Marius killed in some act of pseudosacrifice - when he hears something of a commotion behind him.  
Gavroche is still singing, he can hear it, but he sounds - it sounds different, almost muffled-

“-When little people fight, we-”

That’s when the first shot rang out. It hit wood, but that they’re shooting at all means that someone is on the outside of the barricade, someone is-  
“Gavroche- Gavroche, get down-”

It’s Joly, trying to whisper, trying to not panic the boy’s father. Courfeyrac whips around. Through the gaps in the crates and chairs, he can see his boy, his boy with his shining blonde curls, scampering around the front of the barricade, gathering ammunition.  
Time slows. All he can see is flashes of Gavroche, all he can hear is his boy’s song, and all he can do it lunge forward.  
Arms grab at him - Combeferre, Joly, Enjolras - trying to keep him back, trying to keep him safe. 

Courfeyrac sees Gavroche’s life flash before his eyes. 

Courfeyrac was but sixteen when he fathered him, and his mother was only a little older. It would have been much more of a scandal if the lady had not died in childbirth. But the babe, a boy with strong lungs and a penchant for using them, survived. Courfeyrac’s father had insisted that the boy be sent away - and he had agreed at first, though he had wanted to meet his son once before parting.  
It had been out of curiosity more than any paternal love, but the second a nursemaid laid the boy in his arms, Courfeyrac knew that he would die if he was parted from the boy.

The fight that had ensued had nearly left Courfeyrac and Gavroche homeless and destitute, but the boy’s charms and darling habit of cooing at his grandfather saved them from that fate. 

He’d been aided by nurses to be sure, but Courfeyrac had been the one to help Gavroche take his first steps. He had heard his first word (a gurgled “pap!” that had brought seventeen-year-old Courfeyrac to tears, convinced he had meant it to be “papa”). He had taught him his first song.  
When he’d met les amis de l’ABC, he’d brought young Gavroche to a meeting out of pure desperation to calm the boy during his fever as a set set of teeth came in. Gavroche, with his bright voice and shining curls and eyes wide with wonder, had taken to the revolution like a bird to song.

And now, for Courfeyrac’s sins of childbearing out of wedlock or bringing his baby boy to a goddamn revolt-  
He didn’t know what was specifically being punished. Perhaps all of it. Because if anything happened to his son-  
“May look easy pickings but we’ve some bite!”

Another gunshot rings out, and this time, there is not an accompanying crack of wood. Courfeyrac has reached the top of the barricade, just in time to see Gavroche get shot in the arm. He cries out - the boy’s name is ripped from Courfeyrac’s throat and it's as full of pain as it would have been in Courfeyrac himself was the one getting shot.

Still, his boy - his brilliant, shining son - continued, crawling along. He’s still searching the kits of fallen students and soldiers. He’s pulling himself along with his bad arm, slinging cartridges along his good arm.

“So never kick a dog because he’s just a pup!” Gavroche’s voice breaks on the last word, but he keeps singing. Joly and Combeferre are still restraining his father, who is struggling even harder.  
“We’ll fight like twenty armies and we won’t...give...up!”

His word is puncutated with a crack in the atmosphere - another gunshot that rips through his baby’s nine year old body. Courfeyrac can’t help his yell.  
“STOP!”  
Joly and Combeferre have exclamations of their own - Joly curses, Combeferre yells that he’s just a boy - but Gavroche reacts to his father’s voice. He falls still, struggling for breath through the pain.  
Despite everything, Courfeyrac feels idiotically proud of his son - proud of how strong he is, proud of how stubborn he is, proud of how dedicated he is. Proud of how Gavroche chokes out a, “So you’d better...run for cover…” even as Courfeyrac slides down the barricade to run around, to cut through the small alley they hadn’t been able to fill.  
“When the pup grows-”

Another gunshot - Courfeyrac stumbles, but he’s halfway there, a quarter way there, twenty steps away-

The captain see the wild young man. He has a baby boy himself, waiting for him to return home. He motions for his soldiers to stand down as the father collects his son’s body.

Courfeyrac gathers Gavroche’s small, broken body, cradles him like he had when the boy had nightmares because of a fever. He tucks the boy - still gasping for ragged breaths - against his chest and runs for the safety of the barricade. He doesn’t care if he gets shot, but no bullet will ever pierce his son ever again.  
Enjolras is waiting when Courfeyrac stumbles through, clutching Gavroche’s body.  
Courfeyrac sinks to the ground, leaning against the cafe he called home.  
“Pap-” Gavroche tries.  
“Shhh, shhh,” Courfeyrac soothes, smoothing the boy’s face. His strength is fading. His son is dying.  
“Shh, little urchin, all will be well.”  
“Pap-”  
“I love you, you did so well. You are the best of my life,” Courfeyrac chokes out. He is terrified that the boy will die without knowing what knowing how loved he was.

A horrible choking sound comes from Gavroche, and the boy looks slightly panicked - Courfeyrac continues to smooth the boy’s hair - and then his eyes dull and the weak attempt to grasp his father’s arm stops and just like that, Courfeyrac’s son dies in his arms.  
“No - no, no - Gavroche - _Gavroche_ -” his voice hitches as Courfeyrac quickly, urgently strokes his son’s face. It had always woken him up before and now - and now -  
A guttural sob rips through his throat.

***

At some point, Courfeyrac moves Gavroche’s body inside the cafe. He drapes his coat over the body, hiding the bullet wounds. He closes his glassy blue eyes and pressed a fierce desperate kiss to his lukewarm forehead.  
Enjolras is passing out ammunition and instructions. He is the only one who is able to look Courfeyrac in the eyes as he presses a cartridge into his open hand.  
“Make them pay through the nose,” Enjolras, who hair was so similar to Gavroche’s, whispers.  
“Make them pay for every man,” Courfeyrac responds, his voice breaking on the last word.

At some point before the fight, he hears another one of Enjolras’s pretty phrases. Before, he would have cheered - would have encouraged his fellow students. Now, he loaded his shot only to avenge his son. They are destined to die at this point. And he should die. He led his boy - his wide-eyed boy, his singing boy, his ever-trusting boy - into certain death.  
But if Gavroche had to die, so did as many guardsmen as Courfeyrac could get his hands on. 

Joly stayed by him until he, too, fell. Courfeyrac was forced to step over Joly’s body, backed against the cafe his son laid in.  
Like hell they’d get to him again.

Courfeyrac was shot in the chest and bled out, his hand reaching through the shot through window of the Musain. Gavroche, covered with his father’s coat and looking like he had simply fallen asleep early because of his age, laid no more than twenty steps away.

***

The next thing he was aware of was Gavroche’s laughter and song. Joly had found his laughter as well - Eponine, Jehan, Combeferre, all of the friends of the ABC (Marius was missing, which was odd, but the redhead was often late for these things) were there, and Courfeyrac surged forward. He caught his son up in his arms, swinging Gavroche around like he had when the boy was a toddler. 

**~FIN~**


End file.
